The Future

The past is no more pastthan the future, or so saidMoradian, the unlikely seerof my senior shop class.

I’ll call him John, althoughhe was never a John oreven a Juan or a Jack,although his surname—

Moradian—ended with “i-a-n,”which is Ian in Scotland,the Gaelic version of John.Our John, John Moradian,

gone sixty-seven years agofrom our schoolboy classinto the wider worldof war where his one-way

ticket got punched.I would start this againif I could, start quietlywith a Dougie or an Alan,

both of whom made it intotheir thirties, though neitherever spoke of the past beinganything but over with.

What they actually thoughtI’ll never know. One spring daythe whole class went by busto the foundry at Ford Rouge

to see earth melted and pouredlike syrup into fire. “Look up,”someone said, maybe Dougieor Alan, so I did, and saw

way up above the collisionsof metal and men a familyof sparrows in the trapped light,trapped themselves, or perhaps

out to reclaim their lost space.Speaking of perhaps, perhapsI’m dawdling because I haven’tseen John or Alan or Dougie

in over fifty years. PerhapsI just like repeating their namesas though that could help themor perhaps help me, and it does,

it helps me. They’re beyondmy help. Later the classpicnicked on egg saladbeside a wide stream that fed

our filthy river. Alan,or maybe it was Dougie,managed to cross the waterleaping from rock to rock

and then back again,his balance was that good.Alan, or maybe Dougie,whoever had crossed, dared me

to try, but I knew enougheven then not to. I rememberthe sky darkening in the east,the bus arriving with the rain,

the windows steaming upto hide the flooded streets.I remember I sat next to Alanwho lied a blue streak

about an older girl who ownedher own car. The bus driverlost the way and had to stopat a filling station in Delray

to get directions, so the tripwas endless. I got back beforenightfall, but the day kept goingon and on into the future.

Philip Levine began contributing poems to the magazine in 1958, and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1995 for his collection “The Simple Truth.” He died in 2015, at the age of eighty-seven.